By JAKE SHERMAN and CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN | 8/28/13 5:02 AM EDT
POLITICO

Immigration reform advocates have a new enemy: the congressional calendar.

Fall’s fiscal fights have lined up in a way that could delay immigration reform until 2014, multiple senior House Republican leadership aides tell POLITICO, imperiling the effort’s prospects before the midterm elections.

The mid-October debt ceiling deadline — an earlier-than-expected target laid out Monday by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew — is changing the House GOP leadership’s plans to pass immigration bills that month.

“If we have to deal with the debt limit earlier, it doesn’t change the overall dynamics of the debate, but — just in terms of timing — it might make it harder to find time for immigration bills in October,” one House Republican leadership aide said.

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That’s not the only scheduling challenge. There are fewer than 40 congressional working days until the end of 2013 — the unofficial deadline for passing immigration reform — and they’ll present some of the most politically challenging votes for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. It will be difficult to add immigration reform to the list, senior aides say.

Government funding runs dry on Sept. 30. The nine days the House is in session that month will be crowded with the debate over the continuing resolution to keep the government operating. The GOP leadership will have to reconcile the screams from conservatives who want to use the bill to defund Obamacare with their own desire to avoid a government shutdown. Of course, anything the House approves would need to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate, which will ignore attempts to weaken the law.